So the Ludum Dare compo has come and gone again, and i walk away from it with mixed emotions. Don’t get me wrong, i had a lot of fun putting my soul into something in the timespan of a weekend. I keep doing game jams because i enjoy them. And above all else, i find my game fun to play, so why the fuss?

It was pretty clear as the first review came in that i’d missed the mark yet again. That’s no big deal; i’ve done it many times and will continue to do so until the day i die. I messed up the movement in a platformer. Embarassing. By itself this would be completely fine, but i realized immediately that i had made the same mistake i’d made in my last game jam. One that i thought i'd corrected

So as a recap, for my last game jam i made an adaptation/spinoff of the game Yahtzee. But after the jam was done, i realized i missed the mark. Cause of failure: not actually playing Yahtzee before i started coding. I ended up with a game not at all like the game i was basing it off of

While the game i made this time isn’t an adaptation, i basically made the same mistake as back then. I neglected polishing the core mechanics and gameplay loop in favor of adding more stuff to the game. Back then it was cool perks, this time it was funny cow physics.

You could make the argument that funny cow physics are always worth it, but i really did just end up focusing too much on the little details. Thankfully some people have noticed the care i took to make all those little details, but my time would’ve been better spent making sure they could jump on 1-wide platforms without getting annoyed. (which i ended up having to fix a day after the compo)

So right now, i’m looking at all the games on my itch.io page, and find myself annoyed. I have made this mistake again and again, i struggle to find a thing i’ve made that doesn’t fall for this same trap. Maybe next time i’ll end this madness